Careers in Human Resources

Employment outlook and opportunities

Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources (OBHR) is designed to prepare you for a career in a variety of fields including Human Resources Management, Organizational Consulting, and Industrial Relations. You’ll gain an understanding of the fundamentals of business, general knowledge of all the business options, as well as a range of management and consulting skills. OBHR continues to grow in strategic importance.

OBHR is divided into two main types of activities - transactional and transformational:

• Transactional activities are administrative activities that must be done regularly in an organization, such as recruiting, selection, administering benefit plans, collective agreements, conducting performance reviews, technical training, reports and statistics.

• Transformational activities are strategic in nature and involve changing systems, structures, and behaviours to improve organizational performance. For example, managing change efforts, managing a corporate culture, leadership development, organizational design, job design, and design of conflict resolution processes.

Many employment opportunities will continue to be in the transactional area while large employment growth is being seen from the transformational area.

Skill set required

• People skills
• Organizational skills
• Analytical and critical-thinking skills
• Strategic thinking
• Computer savvy
• Communication skills (both oral and written)
• Ability to work with people of various cultural and educational backgrounds
• Ability to switch gears quickly (e.g.: from administrator to counselor to negotiator)
• Business acumen
• Ability to multitask